VR Design
‘Telepath’ Movement System Could be a Great Fit for Quest Controllerless Hand-tracking
Controller-less hand-tracking (like what's currently available as an experimental feature on Quest) has a handful of advantages over using controllers, like convenience and intuitiveness. However, common VR game actions like shooting and moving are difficult to do with hand-gestures...
Valve Explains the Deceptively Simple Design Process That Made ‘Half-Life: Alyx’ Excellent
The secret to Half-Life: Alyx's near-universal acclaim is... well, not as secret as you might think. Yes, the game surely had a budget much larger than any other VR game to date, but it's far more than money that makes a...
This Developer Turned His Apartment Into a VR Game
Playing VR games is a great way to stay active, both mentally and physically. But when all is said and done, you're still only traversing around a pretty small footprint—even smaller if you're stuck in an apartment. Greg...
Oculus ‘Designing for Hands’ Document Introduces Best Practices for Quest Hand-tracking
Hand-tracking on Quest rolled out as an experimental feature in late 2019, but Oculus is letting it gestate before it will accept third-party apps with hand-tracking. In the meantime, the company has published fresh developer documentation which establishes best...
Three Totally Creative Uses of Quest Hand-tracking
Oculus brought controllerless hand-tracking to Oculus Quest as an experimental feature back in December, and while it's useful for navigating around the headset's menus when you don't want to pick up the controllers, developers have begun prototyping more creative...
Making ‘The Remedy’ – How A Veteran Illustrator Made one of VR’s Best Short Films With...
Perhaps no project to date shows the potential of Quill—Oculus' VR illustration and animation tool—quite like The Remedy. Created by veteran animator Daniel Martin Peixe, The Remedy is a roughly 10 minute long story which establishes a very effective comic book-like...
‘Stormland’ Behind-the-scenes – Insights & Artwork from Insomniac Games
Insomniac Games is no stranger to VR game development. Since 2016 the studio has created three Oculus exclusive VR titles—Feral Rites, Edge of Nowhere, and The Unspoken—but its next (and possibly last Oculus exclusive), Stormland, is unequivocally its most ambitious...
‘Asgard’s Wrath’ Behind-the-scenes – Insights & Artwork from Sanzaru Games and Oculus Studios
Sanzaru Games has been working closely with Oculus Studios since the early days of the Oculus Rift. And while the studio has three other VR games to its name, none of them come close to the scale of Asgard's Wrath—in...
Valve VR Dev is “Dying to share all the exciting things” in Development
In his talk at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, Valve VR developer predictably didn't share any specifics on the company's yet to be revealed VR game, but he did offer a glimpse into his approach to VR game design as...
‘NOSTOS’ Beta Gameplay Highlights the Pitfalls of ‘VR-optional’ Game Design
In development by NetEase Games, NOSTOS is an online RPG due to launch later this year on PC with optional VR support. The game recently had a closed-beta period which gives a good look at how things are shaping up with...
Delighting Users with Rich Interactions is Key to Making VR Engaging & Effective
VR software has introduced many new challenges to developers. Among these challenges, rich interactions are at the very core of all the new elements VR software designers need to consider when creating games or general applications.
Guest Article by Enrique...
‘ASTRO BOT’ Behind-the-scenes – Insights & Artwork from Sony’s JAPAN Studio
From the very first time we previewed an early build of ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission, it was clear that there was much care and craft behind the work. At its October 2018 launch, the finished game not only didn't disappoint,...
‘Blood & Truth’ Behind-the-Scenes – Insights & Artwork from Sony’s London Studio
As the studio behind the excellent PlayStation VR Worlds, Sony Interactive Entertainment's London Studio has been at the forefront of VR game design since before PSVR even shipped back in 2016. With their latest title, Blood & Truth, the studio sought...
Hands-on: ‘After the Fall’ is a Pretty Zombie Shooter That Doesn’t Understand Immersion
After the Fall is an upcoming co-op VR zombie shooter that promises to let groups of up to four players battle for survival within a zombie infested landscape. Revealed last week at E3 2019, the game's first demo offered...
The Surprising Brilliance of ‘Vacation Simulator’s’ VR Paintbrush Tech
Having released the ever popular Job Simulator as a launch title for the HTC Vive back in 2016, Owlchemy Labs is one of the most veteran VR game studios that exists today. Over the years the studio has built a strong...
